Israel Strikes Back: Will It Work?

Back in 1990 or 1991, I was in Israel and one night ate dinner in a lovely restaurant in Nahariyya, which is the northernmost city in Israel located alongside a beautiful stretch of the Mediterranean coast. The restaurant was situated on the water’s edge, and you could see the pilings which marked the seaport built in Roman times.

About two weeks after I ate dinner at this spot, a local family reserved the entire restaurant for an evening affair, maybe a wedding or a bar mitzvah. Whatever the occasion, the restaurant was packed. At some point during the evening’s festivities, a suicide bomber disguised as a waiter detonated a device around his waist and blew himself and the place apart.

It was a terrible attack, scores of people were killed and injured, and it sent a tremor through the entire country. Within a week, the government decided to build a wall along the borders between Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. From then until now, anyone crossing into Israel from any Arab location was stopped, questioned, and searched.

Protests against this physical partitioning of the territory erupted immediately and on balance, Israel got a bad press. But the government held firm despite numerous calls for an end to this apartheid-type of strategy, the wall went up and terrorist bombings within Israel completely stopped.